Trump is quietly making U.S. flooding even more disastrous – VICE News

When President Trump defended the “very fine” people among the white supremacists who terrorized Charlottesville, Virginia, on Tuesday, his new executive order on infrastructure announced moments earlier went largely unnoticed.

The sweeping order aims to deregulate and speed up construction of federal infrastructure on a grand scale, but a hidden provision revokes yet another environmental protection — this one designed to prevent flooding.

The rule mandated that all federally funded infrastructure projects at least consider rising sea levels due to climate change.

While eliminating that may shorten the time needed to build, say, a highway, the decision could end up costing taxpayers more in the long run and disproportionately harm poor communities and communities of color.

It isn’t like Obama did a whole hell of a lot to help with climate change or environmental protections but he did enough to scoot by and we are now seeing almost everything he did – be undone. It’s almost like it’s vindictive politics…

President Donald Trump’s emergency management director said he’s pushing for an overhaul of disaster relief so that states, cities and homeowners bear more of the costs, and less of the risk falls on the federal government.

Brock Long, who was confirmed in June as the administrator at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for homes that keep flooding, and the threshold for triggering federal public assistance after a disaster might be too low. He also expressed support for an Obama administration idea to make local governments pay more when a hurricane or flood hits.

“I don’t think the taxpayer should reward risk going forward,” Long said in an interview in his office at FEMA’s headquarters in Washington. “We have to find ways to comprehensively become more resilient.”

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Food for Thought:

Based on 2016 IMF Report the fossil fuel industry extracted $700B (billion) in annual tax payer subsidies. They paid $117 million in campaign contributions and they have 720 lobbyists in Washington, D.C. SOURCE